Add comparison

Likelihood to Recommend

Aha!

Aha! is the all around product management tool. You need something once you build out a product management role and grow beyond a small scrum team with one or two products. JIRA, Pivotal, and project management tools don't cut it for aligning [engineering] with product initiatives once the backlog starts to scale.

On the other hand, there are several unfinished features that my peers all admit to having to work around: Capacity Planning, Salesforce Integration, Roadmap Display Flexibility, User Feedback, etc. This year has been all about reporting in terms of feature releases. As Aha! grows, they will fill in these other areas, so stay tuned.

MeisterTask

The best part about Meistertask is how dead simple it is, while still absolutely nailing what it needs to really get right. Meistertask makes task management dead simple for me and keeps the detail out of the way unless I specifically need it.

Feature Rating Comparison

Task Management

Workflow Automation

Team Collaboration

Aha!

—

MeisterTask

8.9

Support for Agile Methodology

Aha!

—

MeisterTask

9.6

Email integration

Aha!

—

MeisterTask

8.6

Mobile Access

Aha!

—

MeisterTask

9.8

Timesheet Tracking

Aha!

—

MeisterTask

9.1

Pros

Aha! is an all around product management suite. It is great for breaking product plans into initiatives, features, and user stories. This helps the organization understand the product plan and what is driving individual work items. Unlike Jira and project management tools, it helps you prioritize by major themes, features, and releases. Once you start to use it, you can't go back to a project management tool because the views for organizing and prioritizing features just isn't there.

Aha! also excels at idea management. You can create a portal for users to submit ideas and manage them through a workflow. Users can submit ideas through a variety of channels, including email, ZenDesk, and SalesForce. You can even attach account values to an idea submitted through SalesForce, though the UI in SalesForce is a little kludgy. This is a great feature for those that have the capacity to manage feedback this way, but be aware that it takes time to manage.

Aha! works pretty well with Jira so that project managers can have their backlog that is understandable to the business and engineering can break down those work items however they want.

Aha! also has a lot of useful integrations: Slack, ZenDesk, Zapier, etc. It also integrates with every major software project management tool on the market: Jira, Pivotal, Rally, Redmine, and TFS.

One of the best features is the main dashboard. From there, you have your list of projects, each of which take you to their own separate pages. You can subdivide your projects into groups. Tasks can be added from within a project's own separate page, but you also have the option to add tasks from the main dashboard, with a drop-down box to choose which project it belongs to. Any task from any project can be starred for importance, and the starred tasks will be visible in a prominent place on the dashboard, so that's one way the dashboard ties the boards together. The projects are similar to Trello's boards, but Trello falls short because there's no main dashboard to tie them all together into one big picture. There are tabs for the notifications and time tracking. The dashboard has a gorgeous interface, and the buttons are nicely spaced out. In the settings, it gives you the option to choose a compact interface if you prefer.

MeisterTask has an attractive and user-friendly interface. For example, some other apps that offer some of the same features, such as Todoist, require more tedious steps to access those features. One example is, if you save a web link as a task, you can click on that web link from the task's description without having to actually open up that task into its own separate window first, and it will open up the webpage right from there, saving you an extra step, whereas with Todoist, Toodledo, and several others like it, you had to go through several extra clicks and drop-down boxes to accomplish a lot of simple tasks like tagging or accessing saved web links, or else hunt around for tiny buttons with the mouse, because everything was crammed together too tightly. It also gives you a lot more options to customize the colors and appearance than most apps out there. If you save a photo as an attachment, it shows a preview of the photo, instead of just a paperclip icon, which makes it easier to tell at a glance what the attachment actually is.

MeisterTask has the right balance of complexity and simplicity. Every other solution I've tried is either so complicated that it adds more work or doesn't offer enough features to manage much complication.

Integrations. MeisterTask offers more integrations than any other solution I've seen so far. GitHub, Zendesk, Dropbox, Box, etc., not to mention their own MindMeister. Even more are possible through the use of Zapier and IFTTT.

Easy learning curve. You can get started using MeisterTask in five minutes. Many other solutions with comparable features require watching video tutorials just to get started.

Cons

I wish the notifications could be streamlined, so that the text of the email was just simpler and easier on the eyes, and that I could respond to comments by replying to the email instead of opening up Aha! again.

A little more color wouldn't hurt. The UX is smooth, but the design is rather bland. It still gets the job done though.

Exporting data about time tracked. It'd be awesome if its detail level could be user-configured. Then again, I need that for importing the data into another system, hence it might not be that important for others.

Due dates are there. Estimates for time requirements are missing, therefore nothing Gantt-like either. And I miss those dearly.

Quick access to some features could be achieved using context menu items or clicking deails without having to open the actual task (setting priority, tags, due dates, etc.)

Support

Aha!10.0

Based on 1 answer

Support always answered in 24 hours for any inquiry-- a reasonable timeframe for most of our requests. The PM team participated actively in supporting their features, keeping them close to the product.

Alternatives Considered

Aha! is completely different compared to the other products I've evaluated. I would compare Aha! to Atlassian/JIRA. It's great for agile teams to do weekly sprints and breakdown large features/product upgrades into individual tasks.

Return on Investment

I was not responsible for choosing Aha! as a software solution for our organization nor do I have any input into the cost. I do know it has helped up to stay more organized and increase communication channels.